Short for Electronic Communication Network, forex ECN brokers are increasingly hailed as the future of the foreign exchange markets. ECN brokers are typically a bridge between small-scale market participants and liquidity providers such as banks and financial institutions.

This crucial link is made using sophisticated technology where, at one end, the broker acquires liquidity from different liquidity providers and makes it available to its clients on its ECN platform for trading, and passes customer orders on to the liquidity providers at the second end.

ECN brokers provide their traders with direct access to other market participants via interbank trading prices. Thanks to ECN network forex buyers and sellers can find a counterparty to their trading options. How ECN brokers make money is by charging a commission on each position from the clients’ trade volumes.

Since the ECN broker acts just as an intermediary between your buying and selling orders, they never bet against you by taking the other side of the trading position.